Difference Between NGINX and Traefik

Internet is vast and requires the systems and servers to handle maximum amount of capacity with as less computational power possible, this means that when we develop tools and platforms for users then it is important to consider the various types of tools we can use for handling maximum amount of capacity.

NGINX and Traefik both are the two most popular tools used to handle maximum capacity. both have their usage and benefits so it is important to understand the difference between these two popular frameworks which are used in the software industry widely.

What is NGINX?

NGINX is pronounced as engine-x and it’s an open-source software that is mainly designed to serve as a maximum performance and stability tool. NGINX is purely written in the C language by the engineer Igor Sysoev to overcome a famous problem called the C10K problem (it is also referred to as the 10K concurrently handling problem) and the problem features how to optimize the socket of the network in such a way that it can handle a large number of clients at a concurrent time.

NGINX provides a solution to this problem by working as a proxy and load balancer which is why the NGINX software is widely used in the media streaming and web serving of content via the internet. this project was initially started in the year 2004 to provide a web server that has the capabilities to give high performance, after its launch the software has grown rapidly and also has become a leader in its market.

Read more about NGINX here: What is Nginx (Web Server) and how to install it ?

Steps to use and setup NGINX

Installing and setting up the NGINX server involves following below steps:

• Install the Nginx software.
• Adjusting the Firewall settings.
• Checking for the server connection.

Linux (and other ubuntu distros):

First of all, open the system terminal in the current linux distro system and then type in the following commands in order to install Nginx on the system.

 # Update the system 
sudo apt-get update
# After updating the system 

sudo apt-get install nginx

# Enabling Firewall
sudo ufw enable

These are some of the steps which are required for installing the nginx and also the steps required for enabling the firewall, lets understand now how to start the server:

# checking Nginx version
nginx -v
# if output is -> nginx version: nginx/1.xx.x (ubuntu)
# it has been successfully installed.

Next step is to add the rules required for the firewall, this will help the server to get requests on both of the ports (HTTP and HTTPS.)

# System will show (Nginx Full, Nginx HTTP, Nginx HTTPS) 
# add both of these rules to the firewall
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTP'
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx HTTPS'

Now check the status of the rules that we added to the firewall:

sudo systemctl status nginx

This will show us that the server is successfully installed and running without errors.

Features of NGINX

Features of nginx are:

• Nginx is used to provide HTTP server and its capabilities.
• It is designed to provide the user with stability as well as offers maximum performance.
• In nginx, functions are used as a proxy server for the mail (IMAP, SMTP)
• It uses both event driven and non threaded architecture which helps to achieve less CPU computation.
• It provides scalability.
• It also reduces the wait time for client.

What is Traefik?

Unlike the NGINX software, traefik is a newer project that was launched in the year 2016, it’s known as a modern and cloud-native load balancer that also serves as a reverse proxy for HTTP protocol. It is widely used as it provides strong support for integration with various types of tools such as Kubernetes and Docker among others.

Traefik is preferred by developers because it requires very little configuration and it achieves this by looking at the underlying data of the API of the registry device which reduces the need for manual configuration of the server. traefik is used by some of the widely known and trusted organizations such as Bose, Expedia, Mozilla, etc. it has more than 1.9 Billion downloads as well as more than 500+ active contributors to the project.

Read more about Web servers here: Web Server and Its Type

Steps to use and setup Traefik

• Traefik can be installed using one of the official Docker images available by running it with one sample configuration file:
• YAML
• TOML

For this open docker and run the following command:

docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -p 80:80 \
    -v $PWD/traefik.yml:/etc/traefik/traefik.yml traefik:v2.11

Traefik can be installed with the help of helm chart, but it requires to download the helm chart from github.

Also make sure the following requirements are met:

• Kubernetes 1.16+
• Helm version 3.9+ must be installed.

Next step is to add traefik labs chart repository to the helm:

helm repo add traefik https://traefik.github.io/charts

Next, update the helm chart repository by running the following command:

helm repo update

Install it using the helm command line:

helm install traefik traefik/traefik

Following the above steps will install the server successfully and make it run without errors.

Features of Traefik

• Traefik Pilot can notify when a Traefik instance no longer has access to the internet
• Traefik comes with pilot that can easily notify when any instance has lost internet connection.
• It is an open source software.
• Traefik provides a dashboard to view and manage the infrastructure.
  It implements access controls to manage the security of system.
• It has features such as dynamic configuration and load balancing etc.

Which one is better to use and why?

Choosing from either nginx or traefik depends on needs of any particular company or user, nginx is a tool that is used widely and also offers various powerful features such as reverse proxy as well as web serving etc. whereas the traefik is more modern and works much better when it is in containerized environment and also requires support for docker and kubernetes.

Difference Between NGINX and Traefik

Both of these tools are used as web server tools which makes it difficult for the developers to choose between these two software, it is important to know the difference between these two to make a better decision on which software a developer should choose. the following table represents the difference between NGINX and Traefik to understand the difference between these two software:

NGINX	Traefik
NGINX requires manual configuration through configuration files.	Traefik supports dynamic configuration through labels/tags or dynamic configuration API.
NGINX supports traditional HTTP routing with flexible routing rules.	Traefik is designed for modern microservices and more containerized environments.
NGINX has a basic load-balancing feature and also requires additional modules.	Traefik has built-in support for various container platforms like Docker and Kubernetes.
NGINX supports TLS termination capabilities for HTTPS traffic.	Traefik supports TLS termination and SSL for secure communication.
NGINX is known for high performance and scalability and it is widely used as a web server.	Traefik is optimized for microservices environments with more efficient routing.
It requires third-party monitoring tools for metrics and log in.	It provides built-in metrics and monitoring.
It has a large and active community and is widely used in the industry.	It is not as popular but it is continuing to gain more popularity.
It supports various third-party modules for extending the existing functionality.	It does not support third-party modules, instead, it offers middleware plugins to extend functionality.

Conclusion

NGINX is more known and widely used as it is a software that was developed earlier as compared to Traefik, traefik is gaining popularity for its rapid community growth and easy-to-configure API solutions in the software industry. while both of these software are similar in their characteristics we can choose which one to use in the project by looking at their differences.